Chrome uses more RAM because of new feature against Spectre

Google revealed this week that its solutions for the Spectre vulnerability have caused the Chrome browser to use more RAM memory.

In a publication, Google details its new “Site Isolation” function for the latest version of Chrome 67. It is a default-enabled feature used to protect against Specter side channel attacks that use the speculative execution characteristics of most processors to access parts of the memory supposedly restricted.

That could be great news, but secure data destruction specialists expect that as a result of this security measure it also increases the Chrome’s use of RAM memory.

The Site Isolation feature makes Chrome create more rendering processes, implying performance offsets, as reported by experts in secure data destruction. There is a total memory overload of between 10 and 13% in actual workloads due to the largest number of processes.

This will not be good news for many Chrome users, who often point out that the browser uses a lot of RAM memory. According to experts in secure data destruction from the International Institute of Cyber Security, an increase of 10% of the use of RAM is significant, especially in systems with 4 GB of RAM or less.

The increase in the use of RAM will affect the versions of Chrome in Windows, MAC and Chrome OS as a result of this change, but Google is working to reduce the impact.

In a statement, the company claims that its teams “keep working hard to optimize this behavior and keep Chrome fast and secure”. Google has also been optimizing Chrome after Microsoft publicly highlighted the Google browser for being bad for the battery life of laptops.